“We have weathered previous crypto winters. Collectively we will come out of it stronger.”
Barry Silbert is among the earliest proponents of investing in cryptocurrencies and is notably one of the few crypto leaders to predict that Millennial and Generation Z investors would shun stocks for crypt. Curiously, he is also known for warning investors that most cryptocurrencies will probably end up going to zero by the end of the next decade while still making huge bets on new-age crypto tokens.
After completing his BBA with a major in finance from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 1998, Silbert began his career at global investment bank Houlihan Lokey before eventually founding SecondMarket as a platform for investors to trade illiquid assets like stocks of unlisted private companies in 2008. He eventually sold the firm to Nasdaq for an undisclosed sum in 2015 and has since devoted his entire attention to the crypto world.
Silbert established Digital Currency Group (DCG) in March 2015 and remains at the helm of the cryptocurrency-focused venture capital fund, which has invested in hundreds of blockchain and crypto startups. With firms such as Grayscale Investments, CoinDesk, Genesis, Luno, TradeBlock, Chainalysis, HQ and Foundry owned by DCG, it should come as no surprise that Silbert commands a sizable impact on the crypto industry.
Despite a spate of crashes that dotted the crypto landscape in 2022, DCG continued to expand its footprint. It is believed that the company added 50-some promising companies to its portfolio in 2022, taking the total count of companies Silbert has invested in to over 200. This was while DCG’s firms, such as crypto lender Genesis and digital-asset manager Grayscale Investments, braved the crypto winter, with Silbert assuring shareholders and the wider crypto community about the financial health of his crypto empire.
In fact, Genesis continued to be Silbert’s flagship company and reportedly tried to raise $1 billion in the aftermath of the FTX crisis before shoring up liquidity through internal means. He tied to convert the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, into a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. He was so determined that Grayscale even sued the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2022, the legal battle of which is still ongoing.
Through 2022’s most tumultuous periods, Silbert was forced to act decisively to calm shareholder concerns surrounding the financial health of DCG. While he was quick to address the group’s liquidity troubles, there is no doubt that trust in the centralized crypto platforms was shaken, and it will be a journey to deliver the new safety, security and transparency standards for DCG.
For 2023, Silbert believes that the crypto industry will have to overcome the macro-level distrust of crypto and crypto intermediaries that has flared up since FTX’s collapse. He is hopeful that U.S. investors will be able to gain access to crypto through the U.S. financial system in 2023 after implementing stronger regulatory protections that investors wholly deserve.
An ardent supporter of decentralized finance, Silbert has outlined the key challenge of regulating centralized intermediaries of the crypto industry without disrupting other decentralized entities. Silbert is confident that new institutional investor adoption will continue to rise in 2023 as crypto products evolve, both on and off the blockchain, and path-breaking innovations continue to be developed.
